1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc cartridge, and more particularly, to a disc cartridge assembly, by which loading/unloading of a disc is facilitated to enable both one use in a cartridge state and the other a use as a single disc entity.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Generally, an optical disc, on which information is recorded using a laser beam, is a storage medium of large capacity to read voice or video information converted to digital codes in a manner of applying a weak laser beam to a surface of the disc to recognize strength or weakness of a reflective laser beam.
There are CD (compact disc), DVD, LD, and the like as optical disc media. Recently, the Blue-ray disc (BD) group and the AOD (advanced optical disc) group are competing with each other for the next generation optical disc storage media standards.
The Blue-ray disc, which has been developed to aim at HDVDR (high-definition video disc recorder), is the next generation optical disc storage medium using a blue semiconductor laser beam enabling to record data more than the previous red laser beam does. Hence, the Blue-ray disc makes it possible to record over 2 hours of HDTV, or more than 13 hours of SDTV on a 27 GB disc.
Attention is highly paid to the Blue-ray disc as a new storage medium compensating disadvantages of the previous DVD.
Meanwhile, a disc type record medium is inserted in a separate case to protect a recording surface safely against dust, scratch, and the like while being normally kept or transported.
Currently, the record density is being raised and a thickness of a protective layer gets thinner. Hence, a cartridge having a disc inserted therein is used as it is, whereby the recording surface can be continuously protected in the course of storing data in the disc type record medium or moving to load a disc in a player.
In general, a storage/playback device of a disc type record medium employs a method enabling to use both a single entity of disc or a cartridge having a disc assembled thereto.
For instance, a portable storage/playback device prefers a single disc entity loading to a disc-loaded cartridge loading because of spatial limitation.
Eventually, in case of intending to use a disc loaded in a cartridge for a portable disc record medium storage/playback device enabling a single disc entity loading only, the disc needs to be separated from the cartridge.
Yet, it is able to use a previous Blue-ray disc cartridge, as shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, only if a disc D is loaded within the cartridge.
Namely, while the disc D is received within the cartridge, a lower case 1 and upper case 3 are assembled to each other by screws S. In case of unloading the disc D from the cartridge, the screws S should be unscrewed.
Besides, if the screws S are unscrewed, it is highly probable that various parts, as shown in FIG. 3, could be disassembled.
Installed within the cartridge are a shutter 6 opening/closing a window W for a drive access, a rotating wheel 7 for opening/closing the shutter, a shutter latch (not shown in the drawing) keeping the shutter 6 closed, and the like, which are not fixed to the cartridge. Hence, in case of unscrewing the screws S, the parts could be disassembled from each other.
Hence, it becomes a major concern that a disc cartridge is developed to facilitate loading/unloading of the disc D in/from the cartridge to enable both a usage of a cartridge state and a usage of a single disc entity.